The providers of popular, large digital files, such as software, music or video files, must keep pace with the ever increasing bandwidth demands for delivering such files. As the popularity of a file increases, a larger number of users request the file and more bandwidth is required to deliver the file. With conventional Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) file delivery techniques, for example, the bandwidth requirements increase linearly with the number of requesting users, and quickly becomes prohibitively expensive.
Accordingly, there is a continuing need to improve the delivery of content to users over communications networks such as the Internet.